Suggestions around Undead

I'd like to make some suggestions that would improve the current state of the game around Undead creatures, by making them more cohesive, easier to fight when prepared and/or with Clerics or Paladins, and harder to fight when unprepared:

1) All Skeleton-based creatures should be vulnerable to Bludgeoning damage and resistant to Piercing and Slashing.

2) All Zombie-based creatures should be vulnerable to Slashing damage and resistant to Piercing and Bludgeoning.

3) All Undead creatures should be immune to Poison, Charmed, Exhaustion, Frightened, Incapacitated and Poisoned.

4) All Undead creatures should be healed instead of damaged by Necrotic.

5) All Undead creatures should be damaged instead of healed by Healing Spells.

6) All non-Ghostly Undead creatures should have Undead Fortitude.

7) Damage from Healing Spells should behave like Radiant damage regarding Undead Fortitude.

I think the above changes would make D&D 5.5 / 2024 the best D&D version ever around undeads. It would finally turn Necromancers (*coff coff* biggest villain of FR *coff coff*) into the threat they are seen as, and finally make sense to outlaw the Necromancy school on most of FR's realms.

1. Giving all skeletons two resistances is kinda insane, this is a complete buff in their favour and makes enemies that you typically kill by the dozen harder to clean up. This is definitely something that would bump their CR up.

2. Again, why? Why should zombies have those resistances, bludgeoning is literally one of the most famous ways to kill a zombie along with headshots from ranged weapons. They already have uniformly low ACs, dexterity and their undead fortitude.

3. Why would you give EVERY undead creature at least 5 condition immunities and 1 damage immunity? That makes a concerning amount of spells useless against them when most are already like that. How does being immune to incapacitated make sense, are Zombies suddenly phase through plants and webs? 

4. So are we just removing every Necrotic damage from ever affecting one of the most well used creature types? You also buff Necromancer wizards to comedic levels since they have cantrips that can just heal their undead after every fight. That group of skeletons they have are now always fighting at peak efficiency.

5 & 7. Do they get saves, do you have to make attack rolls? 

6. This makes the zombies unique gimmick a complete joke since it’s given to everyone now, including ghosts. Also necromancers are still dangerous without these random changes, your defiling people's corpses and turning them into flesh eating monsters, how would stronger undead make it change? Do you actually read FR lore at all or do you scroll through the wiki, Necromancy isn’t seen as evil because they make strong minions, its cause so many people who do it are unscrupulous psychopaths that result:

Undead outbreaks

Liches

The slave empire of Thay

& literally Orcus, the demon lord of undeath, who will silence all life in the multiverse.

Why should Liches be vulnerable to Slashing? Or are they skeleton-like, in which case they again have a non-fitting vulnerability? Blanket rules don't work when you consider all of the Undead creatures. What about Vampires or Boneclaws? What resistances do they get?

A lot of what you describe is how they were treated in 3e. It simply added an extra layer of complexity but not more fun. In particular the damage resistances to weapons just meant martial PCs needed to carry around a golf bag of weapons, which was (imo) more annoying than anything else.

A lot of them are already immune to a lot of the conditions you describe. Although I don’t know why a undead could not be incapacitated. But all of them having the same immunites is the big problem there. For example, I could see a skeleton immune to frightened, it’s pretty much mindless. But more intelligent undead could certainly fear things. And why not be able to charm a ghost? Depending on the ghost, it could be pretty cool.

Them being harmed by healing spells and healed by harming spells is an artifact from 1e, and it was just annoying. It’s just much simpler to say a spell does whatever it does every time, instead of, it does this most of the time, but it’s backwards sometimes.

Quote from VoicesOfTheHighForest >>

I think the above changes would make D&D 5.5 / 2024 the best D&D version ever around undeads. It would finally turn Necromancers (*coff coff* biggest villain of FR *coff coff*) into the threat they are seen as, and finally make sense to outlaw the Necromancy school on most of FR's realms.

Might I suggest having a look at Pathfinder 2E for that "this is how it worked several editions ago" feel you seem to be looking for. Don't get me wrong, sometimes I do feel that D&D have dumbed it down a bit much but most of the time I'm happy for it. Almost all of the things you mention aren't, IMHO, any kind of fun, it is just additional bookkeeping and stuff you need to memorise (and I have well enough of that at work).

Quote from Xalthu >>

A lot of what you describe is how they were treated in 3e. It simply added an extra layer of complexity but not more fun. In particular the damage resistances to weapons just meant martial PCs needed to carry around a golf bag of weapons, which was (imo) more annoying than anything else.

A lot of them are already immune to a lot of the conditions you describe. Although I don’t know why a undead could not be incapacitated. But all of them having the same immunites is the big problem there. For example, I could see a skeleton immune to frightened, it’s pretty much mindless. But more intelligent undead could certainly fear things. And why not be able to charm a ghost? Depending on the ghost, it could be pretty cool.

Them being harmed by healing spells and healed by harming spells is an artifact from 1e, and it was just annoying. It’s just much simpler to say a spell does whatever it does every time, instead of, it does this most of the time, but it’s backwards sometimes.

 Especially since necrotic damage is no longer "negative energy" the way it was in older editions.  Undead aren't powered by necrotic damage.

Quote from Thezzaruz >>

Quote from VoicesOfTheHighForest >>

I think the above changes would make D&D 5.5 / 2024 the best D&D version ever around undeads. It would finally turn Necromancers (*coff coff* biggest villain of FR *coff coff*) into the threat they are seen as, and finally make sense to outlaw the Necromancy school on most of FR's realms.

Might I suggest having a look at Pathfinder 2E for that "this is how it worked several editions ago" feel you seem to be looking for. Don't get me wrong, sometimes I do feel that D&D have dumbed it down a bit much but most of the time I'm happy for it. Almost all of the things you mention aren't, IMHO, any kind of fun, it is just additional bookkeeping and stuff you need to memorise (and I have well enough of that at work).

It would be the same bookkeeping as noticing that a Zombie/Minotaur Zombie/Beholder Zombie has Undead Fortitude while a Crawling Claw doesn't, no?

I actually like Pathfinder 2E, but I think it has so many rules that it slows the game down to a halt. And yeah, D&D 5.5 has dumbed a lot of things down, but it has made some very interesting additions too. I think it's currently in a mixed state, where simplicity was correctly applied to a lot of things, but cohesion was lost in several places due to poor game design choices.

Quote from Xalthu >>

A lot of what you describe is how they were treated in 3e. It simply added an extra layer of complexity but not more fun. In particular the damage resistances to weapons just meant martial PCs needed to carry around a golf bag of weapons, which was (imo) more annoying than anything else.

A lot of them are already immune to a lot of the conditions you describe. Although I don’t know why a undead could not be incapacitated. But all of them having the same immunites is the big problem there. For example, I could see a skeleton immune to frightened, it’s pretty much mindless. But more intelligent undead could certainly fear things. And why not be able to charm a ghost? Depending on the ghost, it could be pretty cool.

Them being harmed by healing spells and healed by harming spells is an artifact from 1e, and it was just annoying. It’s just much simpler to say a spell does whatever it does every time, instead of, it does this most of the time, but it’s backwards sometimes.

I always liked martial characters carrying different sets of weapons, hehehe. About intelligent undead being able to feel fear, or ghosts being able to be charmed, I think that's actually super cool and valid. My list of suggestions was not comprehensive and could certainly be improved.

Regarding healing/harming being applied in the opposite way to undead, I think it was a nice state of affairs. Also, since the books are being updated long after their release, adding a phrase like "Undead get damaged instead of healed." to every healing spell would solve that "spell does whatever it does" problem. The real issue would be not seeing that in the spell or in the undead monster, but somewhere else hidden among random rules.

Quote from 6thLyranGuard >>

Especially since necrotic damage is no longer "negative energy" the way it was in older editions.  Undead aren't powered by necrotic damage.

Necrotic damage is labeled as "life-draining energy" in the Player's Handbook, and I think we can both agree that undead don't have lives — maybe unlives, hehehe!

Also, I believe most damage-dealing spells from the Necromancy school either deal Necrotic damage or Poison damage (which undead are usually immune to).

Urgh... I've opened this NOT TO suggest homebrew. But to suggest cohesion in the official rules.

Thanks for nothing, moderator!

This feels like it should be in the homebrew forum. You're suggesting to add foreign rules that do not belong to 5e nor 5.5e, that’s by definition homebrew.